


Sharks

by Sp00py



Series: A Study in Snuffering [2]
Category: Mumintroll | Moomins Series - Tove Jansson
Genre: Bad Ending, Gen, the ocean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-03-01 14:36:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13296948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sp00py/pseuds/Sp00py
Summary: Now that he has a son, the Joxter has to figure out what to do with him.





	Sharks

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Doceo_Percepto](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Doceo_Percepto/gifts).



> This was a challenge to write, but I like a challenge.

Summer was coming, and as the pastel dapples of spring gave way to deep, rich greens and soft, ripe fruits, the Joxter came to Moominvalley. He set himself up on the verandah, sometimes sleeping in Moominpappa’s hammock, sometimes in the flowerbeds or on the roof. Everyone thought he’d come to visit Snufkin, now that he knew he was here, but the Joxter showed very little interest in him, even though Snufkin was, at first, keenly interested in _him._

It was obvious to anyone with eyes when Snufkin tentatively sat near him, or tried to speak to him, something he never did with others. When it became clear the Joxter wasn’t going to respond, Snufkin would pull his hat down around his ears -- a sign that meant he was ashamed and flustered and trying to keep it all caught in his head instead of letting it out -- then huff and puff and slink away into the woods or wherever Snufkins went when embarrassed. He didn’t play his harmonica, or smoke on the bridge, or fish, and it made the inhabitants of the valley sad to see him sad, because everyone cared for the vagabond quite a lot. Especially Moomintroll.

“Pappa,” he asked his father one day while he read the valley newspaper over pancakes and raspberry jam. Moominpappa looked up. “Why isn’t the Joxter talking to Snufkin?”

“Who can say with Joxters,” Moominpappa said. “They don’t care about anything.”

“But he’s his father. Why did he come to Moominvalley if not to visit Snufkin?”

Moominpappa chewed on his pipe, but had no answer for this.

“Maybe he doesn’t know how to be a pappa,” Moominmamma interrupted peaceably, for she could see Moomintroll was getting upset at the lack of a response.

“Maybe he’s just a jerk,” Little My added, but everyone ignored her.

“Oh, that’s right! Snufkin was lost when only a baby. He washed ashore in a basket, like Moses,” Moomintroll said. “Could you talk to him, Pappa? You’re the best pappa I know.”

Moominpappa flushed at that. It was nice hearing one’s own praise, though he could have done without knowing Snufkin got the basket while _he_ got a shopping bag as an abandoned orphan. “I suppose if anyone can explain something as difficult, but rewarding, as fatherhood to the Joxter, it would be me.”

Moomintroll clapped his paws. “Exactly, oh, thank you, Pappa!” He ran around the table to give his father a hug, then pulled back. “But we mustn’t tell Snufkin. He’ll be embarrassed.”

“Not a word,” his parents agreed, pleased to be able to help Snufkin, who never needed any help, which was a shame for someone so young.

“This won’t end well,” Little My predicted, then helped herself to Moomin’s pancakes.

* * *

 The Joxter was watching birds play in the garden, picking at worms and pests, while he smoked and swung in the hammock. Moominpappa came over and leaned against the railing beside him, lit his own pipe, and made a few thoughtful noises to prepare the Joxter for a Discussion.

“Snufkin thinks quite a lot of you,” he began. The Joxter swung on the hammock. “It would mean the world to him if you spoke.”

“It would,” the Joxter agreed, then made no move to get up and do so.

Moominpappa gnawed on his pipe some more, and made it half a minute without saying anything. Moomin was expecting him to solve this. He couldn’t let himself fall in his son’s eye. “You are smoking _my_ tobacco, sleeping in _my_ hammock, on _my_ verandah, Joxter. As such, I feel I am due some respect, even from you.”

The Joxter stopped rocking. “You wanted to talk?” he said after a moment’s consideration, not quite agreeing, but not arguing. He didn’t much care for talking, especially not the serious sort of talks Moominpappa was so fond of, not when there were naps or laughter to be had, but it was better than doing.

Moominpappa pulled himself up very proudly. “Speaking father to father, there are certain things that are required of us. We must show guidance, and support, and provide for our children. I know you live an _uncouth_ life, but even you must care a little bit about your own son.”

“Snufkin?” the Joxter asked, just to be sure. Moominpappa snorted and gave him a look. “He doesn’t need any of those things, especially not from me.”

“But he wants them.”

“He does? I thought he just wanted me to speak to him. He seems very needy.” The Joxter started swinging again, leg dangling like a rudder.

“He wants a father, is that so surprising? I know you don't have any experience as one, so I'm willing to offer advice.”

“How kind,” the Joxter said. “What do you advise?”

Moominpappa hesitated. It was one thing to talk about giving advice, but quite another to actually give it. “Well, I suppose, show him you care about him. When he comes to talk, don't just roll over and ignore him. If he's going for a walk, go with him. Build things together, and tell him truths about the world so he doesn't have to learn on his own.”

“I never see you do any of that with your son.”

Moominpappa huffed. “Yes -- well -- Moomintroll is -- he’s different. He's not quite so sensitive as Snufkin.” This was a lie if ever there was one, as even the Joxter could see that Moomin was as soft inside as he was outside, and Snufkin was small and hard and wild, but the Joxter didn't care enough to argue. Moominpappa had always has such particular notions of the world, it wasn't worth it to question them, especially when he was flustered.

It raised an interesting question, though not any question Moominpappa likely intended. How much did the Joxter care about Snufkin? He had come to watch Snufkin, to decide how he felt about this son dropped unexpectedly into his lap, and he sounded like a lot of work. And now he was causing trouble with the Joxter's sleeping arrangements.

The Joxter climbed out of the hammock and stretched. “Okay,” he said simply, then slunk past Moominpappa to go hunt down his son and bond.

Moominpappa breathed out a stream of smoke. “Good,” he said, and stood there, watching the Joxter walk over to Snufkin's tent. When he ducked down to crawl in, Moominpappa went back inside to update Moomin on this positive development.

* * *

 Snufkin wasn't in his tent, but the Joxter took a moment to look around, to learn about him.  He had little in the way of possessions: a bedroll, some pots, some odds and ends spilling out of his backpack, and, hanging from the center beam, a shark's tooth. The Joxter unknotted it and brought it closer to examine. If he wasn't mistaken, this was Moominpappa’s old tooth. The Joxter had liked it for its uncaring, oceanic origins. Even he could appreciate a good metaphor.

He crawled back out, shark tooth firmly in his grip, and looked around for Snufkin's distinct spring greens. He found them far away, near the treeline, like a bit of pale foxfire. The Joxter jogged to catch up before Snufkin vanished into the forest.

Snufkin had seen him approaching and stopped, paws clenched in his pockets. He stamped down any notion that the Joxter was coming to him, and fully expected him to jog on past like Snufkin wasn't even there, but he did hope. And he waited.

When the Joxter stopped beside him, a bit winded, Snufkin was careful to keep his eyes trained on the ground.

“Snufkin?” the Joxter prompted when now it seemed Snufkin didn’t want to talk at all.

“Yes?” he asked the late-blooming flowers, white and bruised under the Joxter’s feet.

The Joxter was bad at this, he decided. He didn’t mind being bad at things, but he was trying, which was more than he ever did in life. He hoped Moominpappa appreciated the effort. “Where do you like to go, when you disappear from the valley?”

Snufkin actually looked up at the question. His eyes were wide and brown like a fawn, but oddly expressionless for how large they were. “The ocean,” he said, almost unsure. He went to a lot of places, anywhere he pleased, but he wanted a place that would please the Joxter. He didn’t like having to think so much about another like this.  “Yes," he decided more firmly. "I like the ocean.”

The Joxter smiled, fingers around the shark’s tooth in his pocket. “I like the ocean, too.”

Snufkin pulled at his hat, feeling awkward. There wasn’t any normal, natural comfort between the two of them. “Would you like go there?” he offered.

The Joxter gave a noise that Snufkin took for agreement, and he led the way through the wide, tall trees, the Joxter quiet as a cat behind him. As soon as they hit the beach, though, Snufkin felt better. He really did love the ocean, and even the Joxter seemed taken by the glittering waves gently stroking the shore. The day was calm, clear, and the ocean reflected that with lazy undulations and a deep, still darkness further out.

Snufkin risked a smile at the Joxter, more pleased than he expected that he could share this. He didn’t know why he wanted the Joxter to like him (and in a corner of his mind wondered if this was how others felt about him, which made him pity them a little), but it was sudden and strange and a little bit scary caring about what others thought.

They walked in a more amiable silence along the waveline, and as Snufkin relaxed he began to migrate further into the water, away from the Joxter. The Joxter settled on the sun-warmed sand as Snufkin teased the waves. He took off his boots to wade in a ways deeper, and made no move to involve the Joxter in his activities. He knew how to be alone just fine, even with others. While it was apparent Snufkin was his child, the Joxter could see the Mymble in his movements. He moved like his sisters and mother, light on his feet as he danced with the sea.

Snufkin returned to him and sat down, buried his wet toes in the sand. He let out a sigh, and seemed genuinely happy just gazing out across the water. Then he felt a calculating stare, and he realized the Joxter was watching him with his unsettling blue eyes, and the illusion of peace was broken. He pulled up into himself, like a crab hiding away.

The Joxter sat up and reached over to catch Snufkin's chin and turn his blank doe gaze toward him. He examined Snufkin's face, round and speckled with the remnants of days spent out in the wilderness. The Joxter didn't know how old Snufkin was, as seasons were cyclical and all that mattered was what foods grew when and the beginnings of hibernation, but he could tell he was inexperienced with people. Oh, sure, he probably knew all about such things as found in caves and mountains and forests, of wild storms and quiet glades, but from what the Joxter had seen and heard, he didn’t even like people, and seemed mostly confused by them. He couldn't look the Joxter in the eye.

He let go of Snufkin and stood up, then offered his paw. Now, the Joxter felt, was one of those times where he was meant to tell him about the world or whatever Moominpappa had been on about. He understood where Snufkin was deficient, and could supply some insight, because he liked people well enough, so long as they weren’t being pompous or inconvenient, and especially if they liked fun. The Joxter wasn't one for such immediate action, however, so would simply walk until he had something to say. He helped Snufkin to his feet and began walking again, along the long, desolate beach. It took a minute for Snufkin to squeeze his paw back and trot a little until they were matching pace.

“Moominpappa told me you wanted a pappa, yourself,” the Joxter began. “Do you?”

Snufkin made an indecipherable noise. The Joxter waited. “Having never had one before, I don't know.”

They walked in silence again, left to their own thoughts. They passed around a tumble of weathered boulders that marked the edge of the cliffside and cave.

“He also asked if I cared about you,” the Joxter said.

Snufkin looked at him, but only briefly. He couldn't bring himself to ask. “Moominpappa should mind his own family,” he muttered.

The Joxter snorted, then started to laugh outright, and clapped Snufkin on the back. Snufkin was giving him a quizzical look, though the Joxter couldn't say why those words in that tone from such a serious Snufkin were as funny as they were. But they were. Maybe his humor was simply found in drier places than the Joxter’s usual tastes.

Snufkin smiled cautiously. The Joxter’s laughter caught in his throat, and he had to ask himself again how much he cared. Snufkin was essentially a stranger to him, and blood meant nothing special. But he loved the ocean and made the Joxter laugh and danced like a Mymble. And yet... The Joxter knew himself and wasn’t sure if he cared about Snufkin as a person, or if he was just enjoying him for now and wouldn’t later. If he misread his own feelings and let Snufkin think he cared when it turned out otherwise, he'd never be rid of him. Snufkin, after all, always returned to Moominvalley. It was a dangerous sort of sign, so consistently seeking out those who cared about him.

“I think,” the Joxter said slowly, finally imparting some worldly wisdom as he kicked off his own shoes and knelt to roll up his pants. He often just followed the currents of life, whichever way suited him, and it hadn’t yet failed him. Snufkin followed him obediently, curiously, into the shallows. The ground here was mostly rounded pebbles that shifted under their feet and raised very little silt.

“I think,” he began again once they were far enough out, “That you oughtn’t put too much stock in family ties.”

“Oh,” Snufkin said, and the Joxter could practically hear his happiness deflate in that small, flat noise.

“I don’t know you. Do you really know me?”

“I’d like to.”

The Joxter reached up for the sun, watched it splinter between his fingers. It was all so _formal_. Life was meant to be simple, uncomplicated. People came, people went, and it never particularly mattered which or when. Somehow the Mymble got to have children and ignore them and it was fine, but people expected things of the Joxter the instant he had a son. His son expected things, too.

“Come here,” he said, waving for Snufkin to stand in front of him. He put his paws on Snufkin’s shoulders, looked over his face again as Snufkin stared off a little to the left, a nervous flush on his cheeks. He was moody and flighty and it really did seem a lot of work. The Joxter didn’t care much for serious sorts, and Snufkin was absolute stone, now.

The Joxter pushed him over.

As Snufkin floundered in his suddenly wet coat, the Joxter mulled over how he felt for having done that. Not bad, not even a little apologetic. It was actually a bit funny, watching Snufkin sputter and flail. Far more his type of humor.

The Joxter stepped forward and straddled Snufkin then sank to his knees. Snufkin propped himself up on his elbows, hat flopping over his brow. He managed to shove it out of his eyes, only for a gloved paw to splay across his face and shove his head under the water. A burst of bubbles escaped and were washed away in the push and pull of the ocean. Snufkin grappled with any part of the Joxter he could find as he immediately got a sense of the danger he was in. He was naive, after all, not stupid.

Soon he began to really fight in earnest, and the Joxter had to tangle his other paw in Snufkin’s hair. He pressed his thighs tight around Snufkin’s sides so he couldn’t slip away. It was easy, just letting gravity and the water and his larger size do his work for him.

He’d stop the instant he felt a smidgen of concern for Snufkin.

The Joxter studied Snufkin’s face carefully as he twisted and writhed only an inch or two from the surface. It was like how dreams felt, magnified and broken by the crystalline water, mouth pressed tightly together, eyes large and locked on the Joxter’s, though he couldn’t read any expression on Snufkin’s face. It was like a doll’s, painted in pale blues and dark, dark browns. The Joxter knew all about dreams, how they lingered, spectral yet solid as any memory. Snufkin’s short nails scratching at the Joxter’s face were all too real, though, so the Joxter leaned back, leaving Snufkin's paws to scrabble at air and the thick material of his jacket.

Snufkin was like an animal, a little cat with claws, panicked and wild and entirely at the Joxter’s mercy. It was a shame that the Joxter wasn’t known for mercy. A thin ribbon of red leaked out from under the Joxter’s palm only to dissipate in the water.

If the Joxter backed out now, Snufkin would only have a few bruises and a bloody nose. He could recover from that. The Joxter could even explain it away, somehow. People were so gullible, especially when they desperately wanted to believe something.

The Joxter didn’t want to have to explain.

Snufkin’s fight turned to erratic spasms as more bubbles escaped and he jerked under the Joxter, swallowing seawater against his own instincts. His feet dug into the rocks for purchase, slipped, stirred up swirls of sand. He clung to the Joxter’s coat, fingers aching from how tightly he gripped, trying to pull himself up.

He was so _close._  The surface was a thin film of mercury away, glittering painfully bright, the dark silhouette of the Joxter rippling and warped. His eyes hurt and his lungs hurt and his heart hurt, especially. Blood pounded in his ears like the waves.

Slowly, slowly, his paws slackened, fell into the water with a splash. He stopped writhing between the Joxter’s legs.

The Joxter waited some moments more, then pulled away. Snufkin floated, just beneath the surface, hair a halo around him, yellow scarf drifting placidly. His hat floated like a leaf boat several feet away, listing and leaking and soon going to disappear under the water. His doll face, with its eyes wide open and mouth a dark little oval as a few last bubbles escaped, was inscrutable. He really, truly was dead. The Joxter wondered what he had thought as he died, if he had thought anything at all.

Not once had the Joxter thought to let him go, and then he decided not to think of Snufkin at all anymore.

* * *

 The Joxter passed Snufkin’s boots, sitting just on the edge of the waves, about to be washed out to sea as the tide rose, and he passed Snufkin’s tent, with its flaps drifting in the warm, summer breeze. Little My was sitting there, feeding twigs into a fire she’d started in the firepit Snufkin had set up, herself a small flame against all the green. She glanced up at the Joxter, watched him with her shrewd, suspicious eyes, taking in his sodden clothes, the scratches on his face.

“Where’s Snufkin?” she called out to him.

He shrugged and waved vaguely toward the ocean. “Last I saw, somewhere out there.”

She fed a larger twig to the fire and it cooked and popped. The wood was too fresh to really burn properly, and only produced acrid smoke.  “Are you coming back?”

The Joxter quite liked Little My, funny and clever and odd ever since she was born, and they had an understanding of each other, so he felt no reason to lie or just keep walking. “I don’t think so. Tell Moominpappa I’m just not father material.”

“I could have told him that without you having to come here at all. I did, even.”

“It’s a shame people don’t listen to Mymbles so little as you.”

Little My scowled and snorted, then looked away, toward the sea. The Joxter began walking again, paws in his pockets. He fingered the shark’s tooth idly as he left Moominvalley for the last time.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Moominvalley Meanderings](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14002083) by [Doceo_Percepto](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Doceo_Percepto/pseuds/Doceo_Percepto)




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